Social media is often considered an electronic town space accessible by users connected to the internet. These social networking sites (SNSs) are, however, susceptible to human manipulations and can be pools of gruesome content. This chapter explores how social media gets exploited as a tool to disseminate offline xenophobic attacks on foreigners in South Africa. Through a qualitative content analysis, I explore the tweets attached to images and videos of looted foreign owned shops, as well as people set alight and murdered in broad daylight. The study also uses in-depth interviews with immigrants to analyse how they respond to such gruesome content. Thus, the study answers questions: how do online participants react to images and videos of xenophobic violence, and to what extent does the content elevate trauma? Using digital public sphere and trauma theories, the findings of this study show that social media can be used as a digital public sphere to inform, misinform and deliberate on xenophobic issues; on one hand consoling and, on the other hand, inflaming or inflating realities. Although not everyone gets traumatised, some of the users often disengage and delete gruesome xenophobic content while others deliberate on the phenomenon. I note that trauma is not only reflected in how people show sadness, pity and fear, but also in how they express their disapproval of inhuman acts.